Jason Lahr's paintings, installations, and drawings integrate darkly comic texts with appropriated images, creating shifting narratives of working class male identity as influenced by popular culture. The texts are fragments, suggesting excision from a larger story, and giving the reader/viewer flashbulb glimpses at moments of narrative action. Centering on female characters who occupy positions of authority and male characters who are injured, inept, defeated, or perplexed by their dealings with women, these narratives question and undermine the wash of expectations and assumptions we experience and create through popular culture.
A book release of Words for Paintings will coincide with a Special Reception for the College Art Association Convention, Friday, February 12, 5PM - 8PM.... Introduction by Maria Tomasula, design by Robert Sedlack, published by StepSister Press, 2010